In this international edition of This Week in Sex, we look at the recent hubbub about sex in Japan, learn what makes an online sex store halal, and look at a program trying to overcome sexual taboos in Vietnam.

At the most basic level, human rights are not dependent on who “deserves” them: we have a right to access to abortion, health care, work, and freedom and movement because we are humans, not because we deserve it.

For someone choosing to hold off on sex until marriage, what to do about the fact that most other people, including potential partners, will not have made the same choice? How much should your own sexual ethics and values hinge on those of others?

I am tired of it: violence against women may be a current fact—every 3 minutes a woman is beaten up — but it is not inevitable. So here are my top three key recommendations for how you (yes: you) can make it stop before it even starts.

Some opponents of same-sex marriage sound rational when they offer civil unions as a substitute for marriage but marriage by any other name is not the same. Our society can’t hold out marriage as this ideal and then withhold it from some–even if it is in name only. We tried separate but equal and we all know it isn’t equal.